Texas air drop targets rabies virus in skunks

HOUSTON – Small, smelly packets of vaccine are being dropped from airplanes in eastern and central Texas in an effort to control rabies in skunks.

Parts of 17 counties are being targeted by the Texas State Health Services Department. Each vaccine is the size of a fast-food ketchup packet and coated in fish meal, the Houston Chronicle reported.

The airdrop in rural areas is part of an expanded test of the V-RG vaccine, the same preventative used the past 20 years against the canine and fox strains of rabies. Rabies-carrying coyotes also gobbled previous packets.

“We want to know if it will be just as effective in wiping out the skunk strain as it did the other two,” said Dr. Tom Sidwa, state public health veterinarian.

The skunk strain is causing a majority of Texas’ rabid animal cases, Sidwa said. The second most prevalent strain comes from bats, and there is no known vaccine for rabies carried by bats, he said.

Texas has attempted a much smaller pilot test of the skunk vaccine. Packets were spread over plots in Fort Bend County in 2012 then some similar plots in Waller County last year.

The U.S. Agriculture Department studied the oral vaccine and found it was not harmful to humans if they happened to touch one of the plastic-covered packets. And the packets are safe for ingestion for 60 animal species, including dogs and cats, experts said.

Each packet has a printed message that warns people to keep away: “Rabies vaccine, live vaccinia vector, do not disturb.”